Schools in Illinois to Monitor Student Blogs in 2007

Posted on May 23, 2006

The AP reports that the Illinois School District plans to monitor the blogs and MySpace profiles of some of their students.

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

The rule will take effect at the start of the next school year, officials said.

District officials won't regularly search students' sites, but will monitor them if they get a worrisome tip from another student, a parent or a community member.

At least one parent was unhappy with the decision.

Mary Greenberg of Lake Bluff, who has a son at Libertyville High School, argued the district is overstepping its bounds.

"I don't think they need to police what students are doing online," she said. "That's my job."

The parent's comment was then crticized by the Associate Superintendent.

Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea rebuffed that criticism.

"The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," he said. "It is called the World Wide Web."

Technically the parent talked about policing and not about privacy but the Associate Superintendent is correct about the lack of privacy on the Web. Any blog or social networking profile can be seen by just about anyone using the Internet unless the blog or profile is passworded or is set up so that it can only be seen by preselected people.

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